Alexander Crombie (centre) was first captain of Edinburgh Academical Football Club in 1858. This image comes from the club's 50th anniversary dinner menu.

The well-known story of how rugby came to Scotland is that the Crombie brothers, Alexander and Francis, brought the rulebook with them when they came to Edinburgh in 1854 having learned the game at Durham Grammar School. Rugby rules were adopted by the Edinburgh Academy and soon followed by other city schools. What intrigued me was, why had the Crombies been in Durham in the first place? The Crombie family had been living in Edinburgh for over ten years by this time. In fact, it was all due to a shameless charlatan of a schoolteacher - a fascinating example of how unconnected events can lead to an unexpected outcome. Alexander and Francis were born in 1836 and 1838 respectively at Thornton Castle, the family seat, then lived in Kent with their lawyer father (also called Alexander) before they all settled in Edinburgh New Town around 1843. In 1847, when they were aged 10 and 9, both boys went to Merchiston Castle School on the outskirts of Edinburgh. They probably played football here, as the school had a playing field directly opposite. But more importantly they were taught by a charismatic teacher called Edward Humphreys. In 1850, Humphreys left Merchiston to set up his own private school, Salisbury House in Newington, and the Crombie boys followed him there. They boarded, despite the family home being so close, and did well, judging by the number of prizes they won. Then early in 1852, out of the blue, Humphreys was appointed as headmaster of Cheltenham Grammar School (now known as Pate's). With little regard for his existing pupils, he closed his school in Edinburgh immediately, and took up his new post. This left parents and pupils in the lurch, and Alexander Crombie senior had to find a new school for his two boys in a hurry. For whatever reason, he chose Durham and they enrolled there in March 1852. Durham Grammar had recently taken up Rugby rules for school football, and therefore the brothers learned to play football that way. Alexander stayed until December 1853, while Francis remained until the autumn of 1854 when he came home to complete his education at Edinburgh Academy.

The Laws of Football printed in 1851 at Rugby School, probably the same booklet that Francis Crombie brought to Edinburgh Academy in 1854. (This copy was sold at auction for £13,000 in 2016)

He was in the right place at the right time. 1854 was also the year when Edinburgh Academy opened its new sports field at Raeburn Place, and the little booklet of rules from Durham gave a new structure and purpose to the game which Edinburgh schoolboys had played for generations. In his two years there Francis was appointed as the school’s first ever Captain of Football which recognised not just his sporting prowess, but his understanding of the game. By the end of the decade, the Rugby code had gained widespread popularity. Not until 1867 was the non-handling association football taken up by Queen’s Park in Glasgow, and the association game did not reach Edinburgh until 1873. Meanwhile, elder brother Alexander matriculated at Edinburgh University to study Law, and while there he helped to found the Academical Football Club early in 1858, becoming its first captain. The Crombie brothers are rightly credited with introducing Rugby football to Scotland, but what is particularly interesting is the back story to Mr Humphreys, the disappearing teacher. He was a fake academic and a financial fraud. Edward Rupert Humphreys was born in Dublin in 1820, and went to Heversham School in Westmorland before matriculating at Cambridge University in 1836 to study medicine. He did not graduate and in 1838 was listed as an insolvent debtor. He found a teaching post near Manchester, where he married in 1841, but two years later was declared insolvent for a second time. His response was to run away and somehow he landed a job as head master of a school on Prince Edward Island, in what is now Canada. In four years there, during which his first wife died and he remarried, Humphreys did such a good job at reinventing himself that in 1848 he was able to return to Britain as Head Classical and English master at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh. What is more, he acquired credibility by writing textbooks, becoming a Fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland, and crowned it all in 1850 by persuading both Edinburgh and Aberdeen Universities to give him honorary degrees. What they based their decisions on is not recorded but he could now legitimately describe himself as Reverend Dr Humphreys LLD. He was, to all intents and purposes, an outstanding teacher and scholar, and on that basis, he left Merchiston in 1850 and set up his own school across the city in Salisbury Place.

Edward Humphreys

The Crombies’ father must have been impressed by Humphreys’s plausibility as he sent both of his boys to board there. And a grateful Humphreys returned the compliment, naming his next son Alexander Crombie Humphreys. In the light of subsequent events, it is more than possible that Crombie had been persuaded to lend Humphreys money to get the school going. However, although the school promised much it seems to have struggled as there were constant adverts in the local papers for new recruits. Hence when Cheltenham Grammar School advertised for a new head, Humphreys had no qualms about applying and abandoning his own school in the middle of the session. Cheltenham had been flagging for years and in 1852 he set about restoring the school’s fortunes with gusto. He introduced science to the curriculum – for which he was personally thanked by Prince Albert – increased the school roll, was popular with parents and governors, and held in such high regard that even when he was successfully prosecuted for flogging a boy, he was applauded on his return to school. However, he borrowed heavily and ran up extensive debts, reported to have reached £26,000. In 1859, for the third time, he was declared insolvent in the London Gazette and his response, yet again, was to disappear across the Atlantic. If that was not bad enough, he scandalised the town by doing so with the wife of one of the school governors (who was also one of his debtors), each of them abandoning a large family. The newspapers were full of the affair, and although a tearful Emily Comyn came home a couple of months later, Humphreys never returned. He would have faced a substantial claim for damages had he done so. Yet, astonishingly, he reinvented himself in Boston where carried on teaching as if nothing had happened. In those pre-internet days, it is not as if anyone could google him. He was appointed Principal of South End Collegiate School, became a naturalised American, and even persuaded his wife Margaret and six children to join him there. Perhaps anything was better than the scorn they faced in Cheltenham. Humphreys escaped scandal to such an extent that when he died in 1893 the Gloucester Journal described the former headmaster as ‘a distinguished classical scholar’ without any reference to his murky past. Humphreys was undoubtedly a charlatan, but without his shameless behaviour the history of Scottish sport might have been very different.

As a postscript, the son named after the rugby-playing family, Alexander Crombie Humphreys (1851-1927), went on to have a legitimately brilliant academic career, rising to be president of the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, and is known as the father of engineering economics.

This is the story of an extraordinary week in 1997 when events unrelated to football conspired to make the Scottish Football Association and its boss vilified throughout the UK. I had recently been appointed press officer to the Scottish FA, an opportunity to combine two decades of experience in the media with my love of football. Working at the SFA, then based in a grand Victorian townhouse in Park Gardens, was like stepping back in time. Its antiquated methods and hierarchy took some getting used to, not least the principle that every decision, every comment, every announcement, had to be personally approved by the chief executive, the supreme autocrat, Jim Farry. Despite all that, working in football was a dream job for me. As I looked forward eagerly to my first match as an SFA employee, a World Cup qualifier between Scotland and Belarus, nothing could have prepared me for what unfolded.

Sunday 31 AugustLike most of Britain, I found out on Sunday morning that the Princess had been killed. As I came downstairs, instead of the usual noise of kids' cartoons on the telly, there was funereal music and hushed voices. The national outpouring of grief for Diana had begun. In a previous life, ten years earlier, I had once covered a visit by Diana and Charles to the Middle East. I was editing a magazine in Oman at the time and joined the press pack as they followed the royal couple on their round of visits and even to a polo match where Charles fell off his horse. The fun of those few days contrasted acutely with what was about to hit me.​​Monday 1 September

I was still living in Perth, house-hunting in Glasgow, so my morning commute was a long one but the news on the car radio gave no cause for concern. The Palace announced that morning that Diana’s funeral would take place on the Saturday, the day Scotland was scheduled to play Belarus in Aberdeen, but a morning funeral and an afternoon match did not seem, to us, to conflict. However, speculation soon started about the viability of the match going ahead on a day of mourning, so the SFA sounded out as many relevant bodies as possible, starting with the competition organisers. FIFA's view was that it is not uncommon to be faced with such circumstances, she was not a head of state in any case, so the match should go ahead with all normal marks of respect such as a minute’s silence and flags at half mast. Our opponents, Belarus, were already aware from media reports that the match may have to be moved and in fact they contacted us first. Language proved a difficulty, and discussion was done through German-speaking staff members on both sides. We said we would keep them informed of developments. Next up was the Sports Policy Unit of the Scottish Office, to ascertain the government’s view. Remember, there was no Scottish Government at the time, although the devolution referendum was scheduled for later that month. The response came back: 'It is not for the government to intervene or seek to make any arrangements in such matters.' They made it clear that it was entirely for the SFA to make a decision. And finally, the Lord Chamberlain's Office at Buckingham Palace, for protocol guidance. This proved a stumbling block, as you can imagine the switchboard at the Palace was constantly engaged. Finally, a fax went through that evening, expressing condolences and requesting guidance. I was not involved in these discussions, as at that stage there was no particular media pressure, no cause for concern, and in fact I went to Livingston for a planning meeting ahead of them hosting an Under 21 match the following month. That evening, I drove home at the usual time, and all the signs pointed to the Belarus match going ahead as scheduled on the Saturday afternoon. It was calm. Nobody foresaw the hysteria that would mount so forcefully and quickly.

Tuesday 2 September

In the office, as we carried on planning as normal. I remember the page proofs for the match programme came in for checking – in those pre-digital days they were cromalin sheets. Then, what appeared to be the final piece in the jigsaw fell into place just before one o'clock. A senior official in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office called Farry and gave his view that, provided the match did not conflict directly with the funeral service (which it didn't), there was no protocol problem with the match taking place. He added, 'life goes on'. In our closeted world, that was the green light we were looking for. A fax duly went to the Belarus FA, confirming that the match would go ahead as planned, and this was then announced via the Press Association at about 2pm. Matter resolved? Not a bit of it. All hell broke loose. It was the cue for a nationwide outbreak of moral outrage directed at the SFA, and more precisely the person of Jim Farry, for daring to sully the day of mourning. Having tried to play by the rules, a decision taken for logical and administratively sound reasons was portrayed as a treasonable offence. The faxes and phone calls poured in. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the SFA was under siege. It may just have ridden that storm, being well used to ignoring public opinion, but there was another unforeseen factor: the referendum for the Scottish Parliament was just ten days away. The SFA lost control of events shortly after 9pm when Donald Findlay QC, the vice chairman of Rangers, appeared on the BBC network news to denounce the SFA, and Farry in particular. Findlay may have been asked to give his opinion on a football matter, but he was not just a football man, he was also a leader of the Think Twice movement which opposed the setting up of the parliament. Even though a halt had been called to referendum campaigning that week because of the tragedy, he seized the opportunity to point out, 'this is what happens when Scots try to run their own affairs'. He knew the impact his comments would have and he boxed the pro-parliament campaigners into a corner. Late that night Donald Dewar, the Secretary of State for Scotland, phoned Farry to express his 'great concern' about the match going ahead as planned. If that was not enough, he upped the ante by enrolling prime minister Tony Blair's support for a cancellation, and this was quickly echoed by William Hague, the Tory leader. All this was, of course, in complete contradiction to the advice given the day before.

Wednesday 3 September

Some time during the night, someone daubed the front door at Park Gardens with paint: 'Please call the game off'. Mysteriously, it was done just in time for a photo of the message to be published in the Daily Record. The caretaker Mike Kinrade, who lived in a flat above the office, set to work with wire brush and turps. Farry, meanwhile, did his case no favours by joking about the matter. He responded flippantly to Donald Dewar’s call, saying 'Colin Hendry’s out of the game and big Donald might be a valuable addition to the back four.' More sensibly, he pointed out 'We have taken heed of the various viewpoints, but let’s be reasonable about this – life does and must go on. We know stores will open at 2pm on Saturday. We agree with that. It is a mark of sensitivity. We will open at 3pm.' His voice of reason, and his argument that there were 'insurmountable difficulties' made little headway in the face of intense political and public pressure. Labour MP Jimmy Hood thundered 'The decision of the Scottish FA has brought shame on Scotland.' And it was not just politicians: Denis Law said 'I would ask not be to be selected if the game was going ahead. The whole nation will be joined in mourning and showing their respect. You just feel the SFA have got to have a rethink.' Yet there appeared little room for manoeuvre. Belarus were prepared to move the kick-off back a few hours but that idea was blown out of the water when the Rangers players in the squad - Ally McCoist, Gordon Durie and Andy Goram - told Craig Brown they would not play on the Saturday at any time. The Scottish Office had suggested Friday, but the Belarus FA could not play on Friday evening as several of their players were involved in matches in Russia on the preceding Wednesday. And, as they had another World Cup qualifier to play against Austria on the following Wednesday, they said initially that Sunday was not a possibility either. There were other significant practical considerations: the host club, Grampian police, the referees, the catering and stewarding, and not least the 20,000 supporters who had bought tickets and made travel arrangements. Meanwhile, our main rivals in the World Cup qualifying group, Austria and Sweden, pointed out that Scotland would gain an unfair advantage by postponing the match and playing it at a later date. In any case, there were no realistic dates available. Throughout Wednesday, the SFA international committee made efforts to resolve the crisis, meeting at Park Gardens behind closed doors. It proved such an intractable problem that SFA president Jack McGinn revealed that they had even considered withdrawing Scotland from the World Cup altogether. Meanwhile, I was oblivious to these deliberations. I had escaped Glasgow to travel up to Aberdeen to be with the Scotland squad, where a press conference was scheduled that afternoon at the team hotel, the Marcliffe. It was ostensibly for Craig Brown to preview the match, but there was only one topic on the agenda. I sat next to him at the top table, still in the dark about the progress of the negotiations, and totally unprepared to face questions. Not surprisingly, I was savaged by the impatient media who wanted answers. The SFA had yet to learn how to explain its decision-making process in a crisis. I had also yet to learn that these new-fangled mobile phones didn’t have limitless power. With incessant calls from journalists seeking updates, my battery expired and, rather embarrassingly, I had to spend much of the evening standing at the hotel reception so I could use their phone to keep in contact with head office. Back in Glasgow, the breakthrough came when the Belarus FA agreed to accept Sunday, but only after the SFA undertook to cover the additional £25,000 costs of their charter aircraft and hotel accommodation for Saturday night. Finding sufficient bed space in Aberdeen during a major oil conference was just another of many local difficulties! Even reaching a formal agreement with the Belarus FA on this basis was problematic as their president, Evgeni Shuntov, did not speak English. His wife did, but she would not be home until 7pm to act as translator. Then further difficulties arose with permission being needed from the Belarus Minister for Aviation for the charter flight to be delayed, and this was only achieved after pressure from the Belarus Ambassador to the UK. The other pieces gradually slotted together. Donald Dewar agreed that Sunday afternoon would be acceptable. Grampian Police and Aberdeen FC consented. Austria and Sweden concurred, albeit grudgingly. FIFA proved more difficult, as all the relevant people were in Cairo at a conference and could not be contacted, but the message did eventually get through. The referee team from the Netherlands and the Czech delegate were rescheduled. Finally, just after 9pm, I took a call from Farry, who dictated a statement to me and five minutes later, having called the journalists and TV crews into the hotel lobby, I read out his words. At the same time, he did so on the steps of Park Gardens: 'The SFA, in an attempt to find a solution, has received a tremendous level of co-operation from Belarus. They have been considerate and helpful. We are proposing to FIFA by fax that the match be played on Sunday, probably at 2pm. If that necessary approval is forthcoming then we have a solution. In satisfying the majority it will be necessary to inconvenience the spectators. We hope for their understanding and look forward to welcoming them on Sunday.' Craig Brown answered the follow-up questions in his usual diplomatic manner: 'The SFA has told me the game is now planned to go ahead on Sunday and I will have a team ready. In the circumstances I am sure it was the correct decision to take.' Shortly afterwards I headed for home, a three hour drive down the road to Perth. It has been a long day.

A set of match pennants was made with the new date

​Thursday 4 September

Back in Glasgow the following morning, the key issue may have been resolved, but the recriminations continued. 'Go now!' was the Daily Record’s headline advice to Jim Farry, while the Scottish Sun screamed 'Off – and so should you be'. The nation was angry and wanted to let us know. This was long before social media, and even email was not yet widespread, so people phoned, wrote or even came to the front desk. The limitations of the SFA's antiquated switchboard became abundantly clear: it could only handle six calls at a time, in or out. Only a few senior staff (and certainly not the press office) had direct lines. The calls flooded in, and to keep the lines operating they were spread throughout the office to anyone available. Many of them came my way, and there was little I could do except acknowledge the callers' bitterness, much of it personal against Farry. I remember one call particularly, where the man on the phone backed up his complaint by asserting 'Well he’s no oil painting, is he?' as if to say Diana’s beauty had been defiled by him. There was a fax machine which spewed out letters of protest all day long, and even the old Telex sputtered into action, the only time I ever saw it operating. The post arrived with the first wave of sackloads of letters. Not all the messages were critical, in fact about a third of them were supportive. It would have been easy to bin them but, in line with Farry’s policy, every one of them got an answer, which of course kept the clerical staff busy for weeks. They are still filed away in boxes somewhere, I believe.

Friday 5 September

Things were calming down by Friday although Farry, reflecting to the press on what had happened, was clearly aggrieved: 'It seems obvious to me there has been an awful lot of cant and hypocrisy about this matter. Worse, there has been deliberate massaging of reports and clever juxtapositions of truths which has raised media spin to an art form.' He was unrepentant: 'I don’t feel any inclination to apologise. I may feel an inclination to review it with the benefit of hindsight but I don’t think an apology would be an appropriate response at this time.' The staff rallied round and we returned to planning the match itself, with Farry making it clear to everyone round the table that this was one game where every aspect of our organisation had to be perfect. The welcome message in the programme was rewritten, and the date was changed on the embroidered match pennant. Some football even got played that evening and I went to see Scotland Under 21s lose 3-0 to their Belarussian counterparts at McDiarmid Park.

Saturday 6 September

After watching the funeral on TV I went into Perth city centre. It was busy: the shops opened at 2pm, and they were not short of customers. There were many people by that time fed up with the whole affair and wanting to get on with their lives. Up in Aberdeen, there was an unreported element of farce. Being a FIFA match, the players had to show their passports to the referee and one player had forgotten his. David Hopkin's wife posted it to the team hotel but by Saturday morning it had not arrived and our security chief, Willie McDougall, had to persuade staff at the local Royal Mail sorting office to wade through the mountain of mail to find the missing package.

David Hopkin came off the bench to score twice

​Sunday 7 September

Shortly before 2pm, a lone piper stood in the middle of Pittodrie and played a lament, Flowers of the Forest. That was Farry’s idea. The capacity crowd stood in silence, but as soon as the music stopped a roar went up and normal service was resumed. Scotland won 4-1 and Hopkin, armed with his passport, scored twice. Qualification was secured a month later and the following summer we faced Brazil in the opening match of the World Cup Finals. The whole affair seemed over in a flash. In my opinion, it was whipped up and sustained by the media, who feared a public backlash against their own hounding of Diana, which had led indirectly to her death. They needed a scapegoat for the killing of the nation's favourite princess, and latched onto the first available target to deflect that criticism. Jim Farry not only fitted the bill, he played into their hands as the pantomime villain. He once told me that media relations was his forte, but in that he was deluded. Regardless of the challenging circumstances, he could have handled it much better, displaying not just a lack of sensitivity but an inability to read the public mood until it was too late. He was on borrowed time and two years later he was out of a job. For me, it was my baptism of fire, a major learning curve. However, I soon realised that crises and public scorn were common currency at the Scottish FA. Over the next ten years I had plenty of practice dealing with that side of things.

This well-known image, claimed to be the world's first photo of a tennis player, was taken by the pioneering photographers Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill in Edinburgh around 1843. It features in a major exhibition just now at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and is one of the key images used to market the exhibition. The subject is recorded simply as Mr Laing (or Laine, the writing is not clear) and has never been identified. So I set out to find who this dapper young sportsman really was, and why he should be holding a racket. The first thing to establish was that he was not actually a tennis player. Lawn tennis had yet to be invented, while the only real (or royal) tennis court in Scotland at the time was at Falkland Palace in Fife.​ Less well known is the fact that Edinburgh had a thriving racket court in the city centre. It had been established as a fives court in Rose Street around 1800 by John Hallion, who ran the adjoining tavern and also used it to stage cock fights. The court continued in operation throughout the 19th century, subtly changing use from fives to rackets, and in the 1840s was leased by a Mr Wilson. As the advert below shows, he aimed it at the city's well-to-do, and even employed a professional for tuition.

The essential difference between rackets and tennis is that rackets - the ancestor of squash - is played in an enclosed court, with the ball knocked against a wall; in tennis the ball is played over a net between the players. As with many recreational sports, there were virtually no reports of matches in the daily papers, but regular adverts show that rackets was popular among young men in Edinburgh at the time. The Rose Street court even attracted royal patronage, as in 1864 Queen Victoria's second son, Prince Alfred, played a game of rackets there and was hit in the eye by a ball. It would appear, therefore, that Mr Laing is not a tennis player after all, but a rackets player. There is, incidentally, another photograph of him, held at Glasgow University Library, which shows him in a different profile with outstretched arm. He is again holding the racket in an unnatural position, too far up the handle, but that can be explained by the requirement to keep still for a long exposure. The metal frame which helped to hold him steady has been painted out, but the telltale shadow is clearly seen. Even so, the smart sporty outfit makes him look quite the young athlete!

So, who was he? It is impossible to be certain, but I am confident he was John Laing, an Edinburgh artist who was not only the same age as Robert Adamson, he was also a near neighbour. John Laing was born in February 1821 (two months before Adamson) and brought up in the city. Although I have not yet found where he trained as an artist, by 1846 he was in business and advertised his studio at 5 Calton Hill, just a few yards from Adamson's studio at Rock House:

Edinburgh Evening Post, 21 November 1846

As a neighbour and as a member of Edinburgh's artistic community, he was ideally placed to be a subject for Hill and Adamson's pioneering calotype photographs. Indeed, Hill and Adamson took photographs of several Edinburgh artists. Among them was another neighbour, the sculptor John Steell, who was then at 20 Calton Hill but had previously lived in Laing's house at number 5. Other artists included James Drummond, John Maclaren Barclay, William Leighton Leitch, Kenneth MacLeay, John Stevens, James Rannie Swinton and William Borthwick Johnstone. While these connections alone do not confirm Laing's identity as the man in the photo, there is a further link. After Adamson's early death in 1848, Hill continued the business and at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London's Crystal Palace, he showed off the calotypes of Newhaven he had taken with Adamson. In the very same room, John Laing had an exhibit of his own, as this cutting from the Edinburgh Evening Courant (6 May 1851) shows:

Laing and Hill were also listed in the same section of the Great Exhibition's official catalogue.In the 1850s, Laing's art and design business continued to thrive and he opened two shops, at Leith Street Terrace and in Baxter's Place at the top of Leith Walk, while retaining his studio in Calton Hill. He had married Susanna Bryce in 1845 and they had eight children including Thomas who became town clerk of Leith. But disaster struck when Laing was diagnosed with diabetes, a disease which then had no known cure or treatment. After suffering for over a year he died at home on 23 September 1858 and is buried in Warriston Cemetery. As yet there is no conclusive evidence which confirms John Laing as the holder of the racket. But the available clues, including his close connection to the photographers and their studio on Calton Hill, point strongly to the painter as the likely subject.

]]>Wed, 07 Jun 2017 15:19:47 GMThttp://www.scottishsporthistory.com/sports-history-news-and-blog/the-scots-who-played-for-englandWhen Scotland meets England, patriotism comes to the fore, so it would take a strong personality for a Scot to wear an English jersey - yet several Scots have indeed played for the 'auld enemy' over the years. Some were due to accidents of birth or emergencies, others are harder to explain.

Joe Baker (and dog!) being interviewed by Arthur Montford in 1959, the year he won his first England cap

Joe Baker spent just six weeks in Liverpool, where he was born in 1940 to Scottish parents, but despite his upbringing in Wishaw, Lanarkshire and a strong Scottish accent, it was enough to qualify him irrevocably for England. In the 1959-60 season, when he scored no less than 42 goals for Hibernian, he became the first player to be selected from a team outside England and made a scoring debut against Northern Ireland. It was the first of nine England caps. He was not the only one of his family to have an unusual international career - his elder brother Gerry was born in New York and played for USA. You have to go back to the nineteenth century for more examples of Scots being selected for England. Although one was born in England due to his father’s military posting, the others had no English heritage apart from their residence.

John Goodall wrote this instructional book in 1898

Stuart Macrae, who went from captaining his school rugby team in Edinburgh to playing for England

John Goodall was born in 1863 in London where his father, a corporal in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, was serving, but when his father died he moved to Kilmarnock as a boy (via Belfast where his brother Archie, a future Ireland cap, was born). Brought up in Ayrshire, he played for local clubs until moving south in 1883. After initially playing for Great Lever in Bolton, he went on to a glittering career with Preston North End and Derby County, and scored 12 goals in 14 appearances for England.Stuart Macrae, despite his fine Scottish name, won five caps for England in 1883-84. He was a son of Duncan Macrae of Kames Castle on the Isle of Bute, but was born in 1855 in Bengal, where his father was serving in the Indian Army. Stuart was sent back to Scotland for his education at The Edinburgh Academy, where he was captain of the school rugby team in 1872-73, and later moved south to Newark where he married into a brewing family. There, having switched to association rules, he played for Notts County and was duly capped by England. He also introduced golf to the town and was a decent cricketer for Gentlemen of Nottinghamshire.

William Lindsay

John Bain (standing at centre of back row) with the 1875 Oxford University team

Two Scots played against Scotland in the same match for England in 1877. William Lindsay was born in 1847 in Benares, India where his Dundee-born father was serving with the Bengal Native Infantry; his grandfather had been Provost of Dundee. After his parents were killed in the Indian Mutiny, he was educated at Winchester before entering the civil service. He won the FA Cup three times with Wanderers, and played first class cricket for Surrey, but despite representing Scotland in all five of the unofficial internationals of 1870-72, he was chosen once for England. Alongside him in the 1877 team was the only England player ever to have been actually born in Scotland. John Bain was born in Bothwell, Lanarkshire in 1854 to Scottish parents, but the family moved south when he was about ten. He went to Westminster College and Oxford University, where he won his blue at football in 1875, and earned a cap two years later. In the same month he played in the FA Cup final for Oxford – in opposition to William Lindsay.

Jimmy McMullan in an England shirt in 1918 (middle row, third player from left)

And finally, two Scots were cajoled at short notice into playing for England during unofficial wartime matches. Jimmy McMullan of Partick Thistle, who would go on to captain the Wembley Wizards, played for England against Scotland in a charity match at Celtic Park on 8 June 1918. Then on 2 December 1939, when two England players heading for Newcastle were involved in a car crash, the home team needed urgent replacements. One of them was Tommy Pearson, Newcastle United’s Scottish outside left. He later won two Scotland caps in 1947.

]]>Mon, 05 Jun 2017 10:10:15 GMThttp://www.scottishsporthistory.com/sports-history-news-and-blog/the-bright-lights-of-turnberry-scotland-and-england-internationalists-at-leisureWhen England meet Scotland on 10 June there will be intensive, round-the-clock preparation, with every movement of the players planned and monitored. They are thorough professionals, their focus entirely on the match. They will fly into Glasgow the day before and leave immediately afterwards. It wasn’t always like that, though. We’ve been taking a dip into the archives to see how the players used to fill their time before the big match, and have found some surprising diversions which kept them occupied. First, Douglas Gorman tells the story of a magnificent signed sheet from the Turnberrry Lighthouse, then Andy Mitchell relates a few anecdotes of past visits.

Signed page from the Turnberry Lighthouse visitors' book. Image provided by National Records of Scotland, NLC110/3/1

When the England international team alighted from their train at Mauchline in Ayrshire on Thursday 13 April 1939 they were met by driving wind and rain, and a warning from the stationmaster that they would face 'an awfu licking' at Hampden Park on the Saturday. As they quickly transferred to a motor bus, Stanley Rous, FA Secretary, retorted 'We have a grand team and I am confident that we will win' and they travelled the twenty miles to their pre-match base at the Turnberry Hotel on the Ayrshire coast. Tom Whittaker of Arsenal, trainer to the team, reported that his eleven was fighting fit. At this time the Football Association did not, and indeed would not, appoint a manager for its international team but Rous understood the need for proper preparation and probably worked with Whittaker to get the team together for a full day before the game. In earlier years some England teams had simply arrived in Glasgow on the Friday night. However, their preparation did not extend to packing a spare kit. The rain fell so heavily on Saturday that a drenched team needed to change their shirts, and had to borrow replacements from Queen's Park for the second half. This was one of the first all-ticket matches at Hampden Park and apparently when SFA President Douglas Bowie travelled from Ayr to welcome the visitors at Turnberry his first question to Will Cuff, Everton Chairman and FA Vice President, was did he have any tickets to spare! On the Friday the English team had the opportunity to relax and paid a visit to the Turnberry Lighthouse. We know this as eleven members of the party signed the visitors’ book, including some of the most famous names in English football: Stanley Matthews, Tommy Lawton, Stan Cullis, Eddie Hapgood among them. Also on the page are Tom Whittaker, Frank Broome (a travelling reserve), Vic Woodley, Joe Mercer, Len Goulden, Ken Willingham and Bill Morris. Not all the players signed, and perhaps they did not go: the signatures of Willie Hall, Pat Beasley (a late substitute for Eric Brook of Manchester City), Wilf Copping (the other reserve) and Stanley Rous do not appear. Hall was a keen golfer so that may explain his absence, while Rous would have had administrative details to attend to, and indeed had to provide a late substitute for a talk he was due to give to Glasgow referees. Curiously, Stanley Matthews signed the visitors' book for a second time when he returned, this time with his family, in 1947. The Turnberry Lighthouse visitors’ book is preserved in the Northern Lighthouse Board archive, which is now held at the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh. The former keepers’ accommodation is now a luxury retreat in the Trump empire, which would take a footballer’s salary to hire at a reported £7,000 a night, while the lighthouse itself remains an important aid to navigation in the Firth of Clyde.

The Daily Record published this on 14 April 1939 showing the England players at the Turnberry Hotel. From left: Whittaker (trainer), Woodley, Copping, Willingham, Beasley and Hapgood. (British Newspaper Archive)

While we tend to think of the cross-border invasion being a Tartan Army thing, it also used to happen in the opposition direction. In 1939, over 40,000 England supporters reportedly travelled to the match, with the London Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS) running 33 special trains for 16,000 supporters, including 600 who 'invaded' Ardrossan early on Saturday morning on two excursions organised by Sheffield and Manchester newspapers. Each train had two kitchens which served supper on departure, breakfast on arrival at Ardrossan and, after a stroll around the town, lunch en route to King’s Park station near Hampden. It was all rounded off by dinner on the return journey. The on-board darts competition to pass the time seemed a risky endeavour! They squeezed into a packed Hampden and had an outing to remember, as England bounced back from a half-time deficit to win the match through Tommy Lawton’s late header. At the time it was a rare triumph for the visitors, but it would be 1962 before the next Scotland win at Hampden over the old enemy.

The Ayrshire coast remained a popular training base, for both countries, from the 1920s to the 1950s. The English generally stayed at Troon, sometimes arriving as early as Wednesday evening, and trained at Somerset Park in Ayr. The Scotland team base was not far away at the Marine Hotel in Largs, with training sessions at the local junior team’s Barrfield Park.

This itinerary for the England party travelling to Scotland in April 1906 originally belonged to Colin Veitch

It reflects an era when internationals were more relaxed, but in the very early days, the England team barely had time to sample the Scottish air. This itinerary from 1906 show that the players travelled on the Friday, catching a train at their nearest suitable station, either on the east or west coast, joining forces at Carlisle, then on to Glasgow. They had afternoon tea in the saloon coach and arrived at Glasgow Central at 6.15pm, with dinner served in the St Enoch Hotel at 7pm prompt. There was no time to hang around. The Saturday schedule included lunch at 12.30, departure from the hotel at 2.30, kick-off at 3.30, and the post-match dinner back at the hotel at 6.30. The train south departed Glasgow Central just after 9pm, and dropped people off through the night at various stations en route to London where it arrived at 6.30 am. For those fearful a sleepless night, 'Arrangements can be made for sleeping accommodation to Euston if required, and at the Park Hotel, Preston, for those members who cannot reach home.' The next visit in 1908 saw a complete change of pace. The England team stayed at Dunblane Hydro, where former Scotland international Robert Christie (now a local architect) was delegated to look after them and was ‘assiduous in seeing to their comfort and fraternising with them.’ His programme for the guests included a visit to Dunblane Cathedral, where the players and officials were entertained by an organ recital. Changed days! But they must have enjoyed it as the team returned to Dunblane in 1910.

Players together in 1927: Rigby of England has the cue, the others are Thomson and McMullan (Scotland) and Kelly, Brown, Bishop, Hulme and Goodall (England). (British Newspaper Archive)

On occasion, the players even socialised together. In 1927, the Sunday Post took the above photo of the Scotland and England players over a billiards table. It was not just the players who enjoyed spending time in Scotland. We often think of the Tartan Army excursions down south, but it was the same in the other direction. The mass invasion by visiting England fans started early in the century and continued long after the War. In 1956, for example, there were 16 special trains from England, not to mention 11 plane-loads from London and Birmingham and hundreds of buses. As a final comment, have a read of my article about the Scots who felt at home in London, published in the Scotsman in August 2013: http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/scots-footballers-history-with-london-1-3039856

The discovery of documents signed by the man who gave his name to Lord’s Cricket Ground has shed new light on early cricket. The fascinating papers, found in Edinburgh, contain previously unknown material from over two hundred years ago signed by Thomas Lord, one of the most important figures in the history of English sport. Lord was an entrepreneur who established and managed a private cricket ground in London, where in 1787 the Marylebone Cricket Club (the MCC) was founded. It was effectively the governing body of the game but as the club’s records were lost in a disastrous fire in 1825 there are few surviving records of those early years, let alone examples of Lord’s signature.

However, tucked away in a bundle of bills in the Buccleuch family archive, deposited at the National Records of Scotland, I discovered a series of receipts all signed by Thomas Lord. They relate to the Earl of Dalkeith, who became the fourth Duke of Buccleuch when he succeeded to his father’s title in 1812. The Buccleuchs are descended from the Duke of Monmouth - the illegitimate son of Charles II who tried to seize the British crown in 1685 – and the family remains one of Britain’s largest private landowners. The treasure trove records the young Earl’s membership of the MCC and the expenses he incurred. In 1797, aged 25 and already a Member of Parliament, he joined the club and paid a subscription of two guineas. This was acknowledged by Lord:

Rec’d May 2nd 1797 of Earl Dalkeith, two guineas for his subscription to the Marylebone Cricket Club for this year. Thos Lord.

The Earl, who had learned to play cricket at Eton, took up his membership with gusto and that month he played in two matches at Lord’s Ground which are considered as ‘first class’. He scored ten runs In his first innings for Charles Lennox’s XI, which also featured Thomas Lord, and just one run in the second. A couple of days later, he remained in Lennox’s team but was bowled in both innings by Lord, who had switched to the Earl of Winchilsea’s XI. The second receipt from a year later is much more expansive, on two pages. The cover sheet reads:

Rec’d April 12th 1798 of the Earl Dalkeith, Seven pounds eight and six pence, for bill del’d. Thos Lord. £7-8-6.

​This large sum, the equivalent of many thousands of pounds today, is broken down on a second piece of paper which specifies that on 9 June 1797 the Earl bought from Thomas Lord three ‘batts’ for 15 shillings, three balls for 18 shillings and one ‘sett of stumps’ for ten shillings and sixpence.

Amazingly, two of the Earl’s bats have survived and are now in the collection at Lord’s Museum, very likely the same ones he purchased that year. To this was added four guineas for a match, and one guinea as a subscription to Nyren’s widow. This was a reference to the death in April 1797 of Richard Nyren, one of the game’s most prominent pioneers with the Hambledon club. He was clearly still held in high esteem despite having retired from cricket several years earlier and his widow Frances, whom he had married in 1758, was no doubt helped by the payments from club members as she lived on into her nineties with their son John, who made his name as a cricketing author. The final receipt was issued three years later and indicates that, while the Earl may have been an avid cricketer, he was not so adept at paying his bills. It covers three seasons’ membership of the MCC:

Rec’d March 12 1801, six guineas of Earl Dalkeith for his sub’n to the Cricket Club for the years 1798, 99 & 1800, & half a guinea lent at Swaffham. Thos Lord. £6-16-6

The final element is intriguing. Why did Thomas Lord lend the Earl of Dalkeith half a guinea? It was probably a reference to a week of cricket in July 1797 at Swaffham in Norfolk. The two men played on opposing sides as Earl of Winchilsea’s XI again took on Charles Lennox’s XI, a couple of days after a grand match between an all-England eleven and 33 men of Norfolk for stakes of a thousand guineas to the winners. Newspaper reports indicated that a further £10,000 changed hands in betting on the day, so it can be guessed that the Earl lost a bet and, finding himself a bit short, had to lean on his friend to help him out. If this is correct, it took four years for Lord to get his money back! That appears to be the end of the Earl’s active involvement in cricket, although he continued to be a keen sportsman in other fields. He was a member of the Royal Caledonian Hunt, a steward of Dumfries and Kelso Races, and Captain General of the Royal Company of Archers, the monarch’s bodyguard in Scotland which held regular archery contests. However, perhaps his greatest sporting legacy was to football, as in 1815 he acted as patron to the great Carterhaugh ball game on his estate in the Scottish borders. This is considered by many as the match which started football’s transition from disorganised mob game to the regulated sport we know today. It was also his last sporting venture: in declining health, probably suffering from tuberculosis, he was sent by his physicians to Portugal to seek a warm weather cure. It was to no avail and he died there in 1817 within two months of his arrival, aged 46. Thomas Lord’s name lives on at the world-famous cricket ground, although it is not the same one that the Earl of Dalkeith frequented at Dorset Fields. That had to be vacated when it was sold for development and the present site – the third to carry his name – opened in 1814, since when it has remained the spiritual home of English cricket.

Thirty years ago I travelled to Gothenburg to see Dundee United in the UEFA Cup final. I wasn't a supporter of the team, but simply went to support a Scottish team in a European final - just as I had done to see Aberdeen lift the Cup Winners Cup in the same stadium in 1983. A couple of weeks later I went to the return leg at Tannadice. Sadly, the Swedes triumphed 2-1 on aggregate, and the only consolation for United was a fair play award to recognise their fans' outstanding behaviour. I took my camera to both games, and documented the supporters in Gothenburg. A few of them have been used in a new TV documentary, as BBC Alba have commissioned a film about Dundee United's exploits in 1987. Entitled Tannadice 87, it will be broadcast on 20 May at 9pm, and on iPlayer after that. In advance of that, here are some of my photos, which have never been published before. I hope they bring back happy memories of a lost generation of Scottish football - a time when a small provincial club could beat Barcelona home and away, and dare to believe they could be European champions.All photos are copyright - no copying please!

Paul Hegarty and John Holt take a stroll in Gothenburg with their partners on the day of the game.

The teams come out for the first leg

Kick-off in the Gothenburg sunshine

Banners fly pre-match at Tannadice

The teams come out for the second leg at Tannadice

Paul Sturrock and his team mates surge forward into attack

That sinking feeling for Jim McInally as Gothenburg score

The Gothenburg players celebrate at the final whistle. A 1-1 draw at Tannadice game them a 2-1 aggregate victory.

One hundred years ago today, on 3 May 1917, two Dunblane footballers were killed in action in the First World War. They were among no less than 19 footballers from the town who lost their lives in the conflict, all of whom are are recorded in my book Come Awa' the Heather, the story of Dunblane Football Club. Lance Corporal David McInroy, who lived in Bridgend, was a stonemason on the Kippendavie Estate when he signed up to the Lothian Regiment of the Royal Scots in 1915. He had played for Dunblane Rovers, the juvenile team, and was also a member of the town's angling and curling clubs. He was killed in France aged 34, leaving his wife Jeanie and four children. His nephew James McInroy DCM had already been killed in 1915, so it was a second tragedy for the family.​

David McInroy

Hugh Bruce

Private Hugh Bruce had been a forward for Dunblane FC for a decade up to 1912, and was described in his obituary as 'a prime favourite with the followers of the team, a most gentlemanly, cool and clever exponent of the game.' Also a stonemason, working for a local builder, he lived in Well Place and enlisted with the Black Watch in 1916. However, he was seconded to the Royal Scots Fusiliers and was killed by a sniper while working behind the lines. He was 35 years old and left a wife and four children. One hundred years on, the memories of Dunblane's fallen is kept alive, not just by the ceremonies at the war memorial but also by the annual trips to the battlefields run by the High School.

Census returns are a key tool for football historians, but sometimes they can reveal more than simple ages and addresses. This sheet from the Queen's Hotel on Southport Promenade in 1911 reveals a fascinating story about England v Scotland and a bunch of footballers from Newcastle. The census was taken on the night of Sunday 2 April 1911, which just happened to be the day after England drew 1-1 with Scotland at Goodison Park, in front of 38,000 fans. Jimmy Stewart gave England the lead in the 18th minute, while Scotland equalised a few minutes from the end through Alex Higgins, who had hit the post in the first half (and claimed the ball crossed the line). Both of the goalscorers were Newcastle United players, and instead of returning to the north-east they spent the weekend in Southport, where they were joined by Scotland players Wilfrid Low and Jimmy Lawrence, as well as Newcastle coach James Q McPherson, who was training the Scotland team for the game. Each of the guests in the Queen's Hotel was asked to complete the census return themselves, so an added bonus for historians is that the entries have the players' signatures. The obvious question is, why did the Newcastle contingent not return home after the match? The answer lies in the fixture schedule. On Saturday 1 April, their club missed them badly as Woolwich Arsenal came away from Tyneside with a 1-0 win. Then on Monday 3 April, Newcastle had a match at Sheffield United, so rather than taking two long journeys, the players simply enjoyed a weekend by the sea and travelled on Monday morning to Sheffield, where they took part in a 0-0 draw. In fact, they may have stayed away from home all week, as Newcastle also fulfilled league fixtures on Wednesday at Nottingham and Saturday at Bradford. It seems extraordinary from a modern perspective that a top division club could be asked to play a league match without four key players. And it does seem to have had a seriously negative effect on Newcastle United: the previous week they won an FA Cup semi-final, yet the loss to Arsenal kicked off a disastrous month of April in which they won just once and saw them lose the cup final. Arsenal, however, benefited from playing weakened opposition as their surprise victory at St James' Park was part of an 11-game unbeaten end-of-season run that took them well clear of relegation.

Close-up of the football signatures: McPherson, Lawrence, Higgins, Low and Stewart.

It says something for the amount of Scottish goalscoring talent in the 1920s that a prolific goal scorer at clubs in Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales never won a cap.Alex Hair holds goal-scoring records at each club he played for, and while at Partick Thistle was the only player ever to have scored five goals in a competitive game against Rangers. Guest blogger Douglas Gorman has written of Alex Hair's fascinating football career at Partick and Preston, as well as clubs in Ireland and Wales, telling the story of record-setting seasons interspersed with spells where his form waned and times of injury. Douglas has also compiled Hair's career statistics, as well as uncovering key dates including a possible attempt to appear younger than he really was. You can read the Alex Hair story by clicking here, and also check his detailed statistics by clicking here.